Rural Payments and Services

From 1 April, the Scottish farming industry will become responsible for the costs of sampling fallen cattle aged over 48 months for BSE testing in Scotland, instead of the Scottish Government.

This is part of a joint implementation process across the whole of Great Britain and is in line with the same measures being put in place by Defra and the Welsh Government.

The Scottish Government will continue to pay for the cost of transporting the samples to an approved testing laboratory and for the testing itself.